The Platypus Journey: Rare Footage of the Elusive Monotreme

Last Friday I talked about the particularly nasty venomous eight legged critters that cause a good deal of anxiety to many people. The post was called Venomous Spiders for Pain Relief. Today I’m talking about a different venomous creature, one of the very few mammals in the world that are.

The platypus

It was nearly 6 years ago when I first wrote about the platypus in my post called Monotremes, Platypus, Echidna and Pullenvale. And in that post I said of the platypus “Now, of course, I want to see one for real and take a photograph for you all. It won’t be easy apparently, they are quite shy.”

Indeed they are.

Even though platypus are known to be in the exact area where I live, it is very rare to spot one. I’m certainly glad that I didn’t make it number one on my ‘to do’ list.

Filmmaker Max Moller did make it a high priority and he’s a professional filmmaker. After seven years of trying, he had only captured 30 seconds of footage.

Now, when you’re trying to capture the platypus on film, I suspect you spend the vast majority of your time staring at creeks with your video camera on standby. And that’s exactly what Max Moller was doing when he was trying to capture film of the platypus in Tasmania.

He then saw something moving through the grass. He thought it might be some kind of big lizard, but when he took a closer look, he couldn’t believe his eyes.

Yes, it was a platypus making his way from one creek to another, luckily he and his assistant were clutching their cameras and were able to capture this beautiful footage.

I wish this were my footage, but I think I could live here for another 70 years (if that were physically possible) and not capture a moment like this.

Stung by a platypus? I shouldn’t think there are many people who have been through that, was it painful?

As for the weekends, we do all sorts of different things, it would take me forever to tell you. What you will find though is that often (but not always) my post on a Monday is about what we did at the weekend, reading those will give you a good idea.

I'm BobinOz and I moved to Australia in November 2007 after living in England for a very long time. Why did I move and what's it like here? All this and more answered right here at Bobinoz. Click here to read more on my about me page.